{"id":"01KG8AMXWE2Q0J3V2R8KGMDKYD","cid":"bafkreia3me7ras3ezhneq2pwnxhuuzynld3qdskhpcueqjzvwvht3s2zfa","type":"chunk","properties":{"end_line":483,"extracted_at":"2026-01-30T20:48:52.918Z","extracted_by":"structure-extraction-lambda","label":"Chunk 3","source_file":"01KG89J1JSYKSGCE149MH9HF6A","start_line":420,"text":"present titled English families which can trace any thing like a direct\r\nunvitiated blood-descent from the thief knights of the Norman. Beyond\r\nCharles II. their direct genealogies seem vain as though some Jew\r\nclothesman, with a tea-canister on his head, turned over the first\r\nchapter of St. Matthew to make out his unmingled participation in the\r\nblood of King Saul, who had long died ere the career of the Cæsar began.\r\n\r\nNow, not preliminarily to enlarge upon the fact that, while in England\r\nan immense mass of state-masonry is brought to bear as a buttress in\r\nupholding the hereditary existence of certain houses, while with us\r\nnothing of that kind can possibly be admitted; and to omit all mention\r\nof the hundreds of unobtrusive families in New England who,\r\nnevertheless, might easily trace their uninterrupted English lineage to\r\na time before Charles the Blade: not to speak of the old and\r\noriental-like English planter families of Virginia and the South; the\r\nRandolphs for example, one of whose ancestors, in King James' time,\r\nmarried Pocahontas the Indian Princess, and in whose blood therefore an\r\nunderived aboriginal royalty was flowing over two hundred years ago;\r\nconsider those most ancient and magnificent Dutch Manors at the North,\r\nwhose perches are miles--whose meadows overspread adjacent\r\ncountries--and whose haughty rent-deeds are held by their thousand\r\nfarmer tenants, so long as grass grows and water runs; which hints of a\r\nsurprising eternity for a deed, and seem to make lawyer's ink\r\nunobliterable as the sea. Some of those manors are two centuries old;\r\nand their present patrons or lords will show you stakes and stones on\r\ntheir estates put there--the stones at least--before Nell Gwynne the\r\nDuke-mother was born, and genealogies which, like their own river,\r\nHudson, flow somewhat farther and straighter than the Serpentine\r\nbrooklet in Hyde Park.\r\n\r\nThese far-descended Dutch meadows lie steeped in a Hindooish haze; an\r\neastern patriarchalness sways its mild crook over pastures, whose tenant\r\nflocks shall there feed, long as their own grass grows, long as their\r\nown water shall run. Such estates seem to defy Time's tooth, and by\r\nconditions which take hold of the indestructible earth seem to\r\ncontemporize their fee-simples with eternity. Unimaginable audacity of a\r\nworm that but crawls through the soil he so imperially claims!\r\n\r\nIn midland counties of England they boast of old oaken dining-halls\r\nwhere three hundred men-at-arms could exercise of a rainy afternoon, in\r\nthe reign of the Plantagenets. But our lords, the Patroons, appeal not\r\nto the past, but they point to the present. One will show you that the\r\npublic census of a county is but part of the roll of his tenants. Ranges\r\nof mountains, high as Ben Nevis or Snowdon, are their walls; and regular\r\narmies, with staffs of officers, crossing rivers with artillery, and\r\nmarching through primeval woods, and threading vast rocky defiles, have\r\nbeen sent out to distrain upon three thousand farmer-tenants of one\r\nlandlord, at a blow. A fact most suggestive two ways; both whereof shall\r\nbe nameless here.\r\n\r\nBut whatever one may think of the existence of such mighty lordships in\r\nthe heart of a republic, and however we may wonder at their thus\r\nsurviving, like Indian mounds, the Revolutionary flood; yet survive and\r\nexist they do, and are now owned by their present proprietors, by as\r\ngood nominal title as any peasant owns his father's old hat, or any duke\r\nhis great-uncle's old coronet.\r\n\r\nFor all this, then, we shall not err very widely if we humbly conceive,\r\nthat--should she choose to glorify herself in that inconsiderable\r\nway--our America will make out a good general case with England in this\r\nshort little matter of large estates, and long pedigrees--pedigrees I\r\nmean, wherein is no flaw.\r\n\r\n\r","title":"Chunk 3"},"relationships":[{"peer":"01KG8AKK0K9V8STV8CZ3GBYPDD","peer_type":"section","predicate":"in"},{"peer":"01KG89J1JSYKSGCE149MH9HF6A","peer_type":"file","predicate":"extractedFrom"},{"peer":"01KG89HMDZKNY753EZE1CJ8HZW","peer_type":"collection","predicate":"collection"},{"peer":"01KG8AMXWE79YWH8NFXBM2Q3BQ","peer_type":"chunk","predicate":"prev"}],"ver":2,"created_at":"2026-01-30T20:48:53.134Z","ts":"2026-01-30T20:49:01.054Z","edited_by":{"method":"manual","user_id":"01KFF0H3YRP9ZSM033AM0QJ47H"}}